[Patent document 1] JP 2010-282244 A
A conventional input apparatus is indicated in Patent document 1, for instance. The input apparatus in Patent document 1 includes the following: a display portion which displays function items as objects and a cursor on the screen; an input portion which selects a function item using the cursor; and a control portion which controls a movement of the cursor based on an input value from the input portion.
The cursor may be moved from the position of a function item to a position outside of the function item. In this case, the control portion stops the cursor once on a boundary of the function item, and then moves the cursor towards the position outside of the function item when a magnitude of an input value for the movement of the cursor is greater than a threshold value.
Such a configuration enables ignorance of an unintended slight misalignment arising in the case of manipulating the input portion when shifting the cursor to a position outside of the function item. Thus, the selection of an intended function item is facilitated; the higher-precision manipulation is enabled.
The display portion may contain several function items that are arrayed as several rows. Such a configuration may cause an erroneous selection of a function item. The manipulation by the input portion is a manual manipulation of a person. When moving a cursor in a row direction in which the row of function items is extended, the input portion may not easily move the cursor to perfectly follow the straight line along the row direction. The cursor may be sometimes moved to a row next to the row to which an intended function item belongs; thereby, an unintended function item in the next row may be selected unfortunately.
Further, even if an intended function item is correctly selected, the selected coordinate position may be close to the boundary of the intended function item; further, a slight misalignment may occur in an input manipulation for determining the selection such as a manipulation of pressing with a finger. This may cause an erroneous input to unintentionally determine the selection of an unintended function item belonging to the next row.